Skylake Chips: Impressive Range, But Will They Drive Upgrades?

Intel announced 48 different chips in what is officially called the 6th Generation Core processors, and over the next few months, we should see even more.

What impressed me the most about this week's announcement of Intel's "Skylake" generation of 14nm chips for desktops and laptops wasn't so much the chips themselves—we knew they were coming and knew a lot about the technical details—but the sheer breadth of the line.

Intel announced 48 different chips in what is officially called the 6th Generation Core processors, and over the next few months, we should see even more. The goal seems to be a chip for every niche within the traditional computing space from tablets and 2-in-1s all the way up to the highest-end overclocked gaming desktops, with power requirements ranging from 4.5 watts to 91 watts.

Yesterday's set of chips incudes:

Five 4.5W Y-series processors for small-screen, 2-in-1 detachables and convertibles

Ten 15W and four 28W U-series processors for 2-in-1 convertibles and ultra-thin laptops

Six 45W H-series processors for thin clamshells and large-screen notebooks

Two 91W desktop S-series processors for overclockers and gaming enthusiasts.

Note the way Intel's naming works—these chips will have names such as the Intel Core i5-6300U, a dual-core processor meant for ultrabooks, with 3 megabytes of cache, and speeds up to 3GHz. In Intel's naming, it uses Core i3, i5, and i7 for different grades of mainstream processors, with the 6000 series indicating the Skylake architecture and the letter after the number distinguishing the larger variants as listed above. In addition, the Core-m designation (now also with m3, m5, and m7) is used for the 4.5 watt versions within the Y-series.

The announced Skylake chips include several that will be sold under the Pentium 4000 series, typically dual-core versions with lower price points, and a couple in the Xeon E3-1500 series, aimed at mobile workstations.

Overall, Intel says there are five different die variants on the Skylake chips offered so far, with two or four cores and two to four groups of graphics cores. These will be offered in four different packages, from the thinnest laptops to socketed desktops. The smallest chips include platform I/O features integrated on the chip, while the larger ones require a separate chipset (sometimes called a platform controller hub or PCH or "south bridge") to offer more options.

While Intel has touted graphics improvements on these chips, the versions with even better graphics known as Iris and Iris Pro—a variation that includes embedded DRAM on the package for faster performance—haven't been announced yet (though in the announcement there was one version with smaller embedded DRAM), and this should account for another 20 or so additional chips. We also seem to be a few months away for the variations with vPro technology, aimed to be more corporate manageable.

All told, we could end up with close to 100 Skylake variants for client computing in the near future, presenting system makers with many choices. This isn't a completely new trend—Intel's website now lists 79 mobile and 72 desktop chips using the 22nm Haswell architecture, but those rolled out during a longer period. It's an indication of how, while people talk about how the PC market has become commoditized, there is still significant room for differentiation.

(And of course, Intel also sells Atom chips, aimed at tablets but also at low-end laptops usually on the Celeron or Pentium brands; I expect we'll see the basics of the Skylake architecture used in Xeon-E5 and E7 servers sometime next year.)

I also note that Intel for the first time is not giving out die sizes or the transistor counts for the chips, citing competitive issues. That's too bad—it was those variables that really let us know how Moore's Law was progressing.

We also don't yet know much about performance, though with the chips launching that should change shortly. We've seen some improvements on the high-end "K" chips aimed at desktop overclockers that were reviewed a few weeks back, but it didn't seem like a big gain compared with the previous 22nm Haswell version. At the Intel Developer Forum, the chip designers said a big focus was getting more performance at the lower power, so I'll be looking in particular to see how the Y- and U-series compare to the earlier 14nm Broadwell chips.

Intel did state that compared with five-year-old systems, the new chips enable up to 2.5 times better general performance and up to 30 times better graphics (considering only integrated graphics, not discrete chips), and allow up to three times the battery life. That all sounds really nice, but the big question is whether a combination of better chips and Microsoft Windows 10 will convince people whose machines are "good enough" to upgrade faster.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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